actuallyclintbarton:

iokheaira:

buckycamehome:

So, wow.  Yeah.  Another one of those “I’ve been reading a lot of.. and.. (insert my opinion here).”

So, yes,  I keep reading about Bucky as the ladies man: all sexed up and such.  It’s a bit baffling to me, as this is a very modern way of thinking.  Dating – or courtship – was very different in the 30’s and 40’s than it is today!

For example, take this excerpt from A Brief History of Courtship and Dating in America, (Part 2):

Beth Bailey and Ken Myers explain in the Mars Hill Audio Report, Wandering Toward the Altar: The Decline of American Courtship, before World War II, American youth prized what Bailey calls a promiscuous popularity, demonstrated through the number and variety of dates a young adult could command, sometimes even on the same night.

In the late 1940s, Margaret Mead, in describing this pre-war dating system, argued that dating was not about sex or marriage. Instead, it was a “competitive game,” a way for girls and boys to demonstrate their popularity.

This describes a situation in which dating was more about one’s reputation than any sort of romance.  It was very important not only to be seen with many dates, but with the proper people.  This explains why Steve would have had such a difficult time securing a partner: being seen with someone unpopular was worse than not being seen at all.  However, this gives us a clue as to how popular Bucky must have been!  If he was able to leverage himself in order to get Steve dates, Bucky must have been pretty high-ranking on the dating scale.

For men, desirable dating traits included a good personality and dance skills, as well as being “tactful, amusing, well dressed, prompt, and courteous” (Great Depression and the Middle Class…).  Lasciviousness was not a good quality!  Women communicated with one another concerning a man’s suitability, so for Bucky to have been popular he couldn’t have been the sex-centric playboy that fans like to imagine.  It’s far more likely that he was well-spoken, funny, charming, and a great dancer.  Remember, Bucky was from the lower classes, so he wouldn’t have had the money – despite the Depression, it was expected that men pay for the entire date (barring Sadie Hawkins themed events and once a couple started to go steady) – to impress women with a car and fancy clothes, nor would he have been able to take them out to dinner, so his dance skills would have been pretty important!  

In fact, dancing was such a popular form of entertainment that, in one year, the University of Michigan fraternities held over 300 evening dances!

According to this web page “young people in the 1930s dated and double-dated by going to movies, getting something to eat, going for ice cream, driving around, spending time with friends, going to dances, and even ‘necking.’”  That’s right folks, necking.  Not fucking.  

Women were expected to straddle a fine line between being too forward or too “frigid,” both of which could harm their reputations.  Young people engaged in kissing, necking, and petting (meaning anything short of full intercourse).  Petting was becoming more common – due, in part, to rising automobile-culture – as was sex itself; heavier petting typically came from going-steady, and engagement “came… to mean that partners would at some point ‘go all the way’” (Teen Culture in the 1930’s).  Ladies who were known to be free with their sexuality prior to commitment were in danger of being known for exactly that, and could easily become popular merely as a means to an end (the wrong kind of popularity).

So, it likely wouldn’t have been hard for Bucky, as a popular young man, to find a willing partner (and I’m certainly not suggesting that he was virginal).  However, if he were the sort of man to focus on easy women, it’s not likely that he would maintain his own high rating (which, again, we can guess at by the fact that he was able to not only secure himself dates, but Steve as well).  

This is a really quick and dirty run-down of dating and sex during the 30’s into the early 40’s, but there is a lot of information available out there.  Bucky is presented as a stand-up guy, so I don’t really understand why so many people seem to view him as some sort of a man whore.  I sincerely doubt that he was entirely chaste (particularly once he went into the Army, a topic which I avoided on purpose), but I imagine that he was a desirable companion for his charm and dateability far more than for his sexual prowess.

Note also how these same qualities (“tactful, amusing, well dressed, prompt, and courteous”) are very attractive today, too, and regardless of how well the filmmakers did their research, that’s exactly how Bucky comes across at the start of the film. Depending on his background, he might or might not be a man you’d seriously consider marrying, but he would definitely be someone to recommend to a friend as good company for an evening. (This means that a writer can plausibly interpret Bucky as anything and everything between virginal to modern serial monogamist -level of sexual experience or even very experienced – consider, if you will, the attractions of a charming man with an absolute sense of discretion.)

And then contrast this with pre-serum!Steve, who comes to their double date dressed – the best you can say is that he tried (and remember, he’s literally coming there after a fight in a dirty alley), is nearly silent, awkward almost to the point of tactlessness, and generally projects an air of wanting to be anywhere else but there, up to and including the trenches getting shot at.

It’s no wonder that his date is so upset, because pre-serum!Steve might be a doll once you get to know him, but as a blind date, he is an utter and total tragedy.

It also underlines how far from OK Bucky is after his rescue – he’s scruffy, unkempt and his uniform is a mess, he’s drinking hard liquor alone, and his attempt to channel the old charming Bucky at Agent Carter falls flat. He does get somewhat better later, as we can tell from his improved appearance in the new blue uniform jacket, but there’s a sharp edge there that wasn’t before. On the other hand, this is no longer New York with is dates and dances; Bucky wouldn’t be the only man on leave who’d lost the bright easy shine.

War changed a lot of things, and that includes the attitudes of women. Before, Private Lorraine probably wouldn’t have dreamed of ambushing a man with a kiss in a public place, no matter how handsome or heroic, but in wartime, people occasionally reconsidered the rules. (I’m not sure what the rules were for dating in England, but I do wonder if a part of the confusion between Steve and Peggy might stem up from different cultural approaches to dating between Britain and USA, in addition to the difficulties that a romance with a fellow soldier could cause her professionally.)

But to get back to Steve – consciously or unconsciously, who do you think he’s trying to emulate in company now that his body, fame and military rank have suddenly bumped up his social rating, if not Bucky-from-before?

(Side note: of the rest of the Howlies, Monty probably did respectably well for himself in his elevated social circles, which IIRC worked a bit differently; as for Dum-Dum, I doubt he ever even tried to play the game Bucky used to excel at; Jim probably was okay, but he doesn’t strike me as a man with the patience for being a social butterfly. Gabe Jones? He must’ve gone to all of the dances. All of them. Remember that suit from the very end? Now, there is one dapper gentleman with savoir-faire.)

Thank you for all this awesome information! 😀  I already knew that, while post-WS Bucky can easily be portrayed as a bit of a “bad boy”, he definitely wasn’t BEFORE that, bit it’s cool to have some insight into what dating was like back then!

Polite, dapper, dashing gentleman Bucky Barnes and his questionable, fight-picking punk of a best friend Steve Rogers is my fave thing.